


scream hallelujah if it's a thing that helps you breathe

by sibley (ferns)



Category: Justice League of America's Vibe (Comics), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Dehumanization, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Minor Character Death, Physical Abuse Recovery - Freeform, Recovery, Things getting better, Trans Female Character, accidental misgendering, autistic characters, emotional/psychological abuse recovery, weird morality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 19:53:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14900924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: This isn't the story of Mordeth's invasion of Earth-1 which cumulated in her destruction at the hands of her own Hound. This is the story of after that, and the person who defeated her.





	scream hallelujah if it's a thing that helps you breathe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [buckybunnyteeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckybunnyteeth/gifts).



> Warnings for past physical/psychological abuse, minor character death and injury, briefly implied ABA tactics, references to self harm, and accidental misgendering/someone using dehumanizing language when referring to themselves in their head. (As always, let me know if there's something I think I should add to this.) 
> 
> This all sounds pretty dark but I promise it's a story about recovery.

The person standing outside of Rupture’s cell belongs to it. It tilts its head to one side and watches him move through lazily slitted eyes as he slides food into its cell on a little tray. It moves for the trey slowly, the old aches in its shoulders and spine returning as it stretches. The person watches it do so like it’s an animal in a zoo.

Rupture eats fast, forgoing the plastic utensils that they gave it-and it can’t help but notice that they’ve stopped giving it anything actually sharp and it flexes its right hand just to feel the four small bloody holes left in it fingers from the tines of the last fork they gave it-in favor of shoveling the food directly into its mouth with its fingers. Eggs. Rubbery and bland.

The person outside the cell makes a small choked off noise when it looks up at them, teeth bared and eyes gleaming with just a hint of red. It watches them clap a hand over its mouth and make a pitiful sniffling noise before resting their hand against the reinforced glass door.

“I know you’re still in there, ‘Mando,” they whisper. Rupture growls. This person belongs to it. This person is _Rupture’s._ It should be in this cell with it. Where it can protect them. Or kill them. Whichever its Mistress sees fit. _(Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up.)_ “I’m gonna get you back, okay? I’m gonna save you. It’s gonna be alright. I promise.”

Rupture moves away from the tray, leaning against the back wall of the cell and lazily stretching its legs out in front of it. There is one benefit to being here, to being trapped in this tiny cramped cell without being able to feel the power running through its veins and screaming to be let out, and that is that its prey cannot get to it here.

A rat can damage a snake when it is frightened and cornered, trapped and angry and faced with its own death. That is what happened with her prey, too. It got too scared of its own death to care that it could never win against it. That neither of them could win against it, even as powerful as they are. Fear of dying outweighed fear of death incarnate. Rupture wonders what its prey is doing. It scrapes its nails against the floor of the little cell. It makes the same sound as they did when it dug them into bright blue alloy and gold and black leather.

“Don’t do that,” the person says. They had a name once, didn’t they? Rupture knows they must’ve had a name once. Before they were just _the person._ The person who brings it food. The person who cries when it sees it. The person who still has traces on it from its prey kissing it and touching it. Rupture curls up its lip at him. The other people are better. The other people talk to it like it’s a monster. Which it is. Of course it is. But this person doesn’t seem to know that. Maybe it does. Maybe it just doesn’t care. It scrapes its nails again, hard enough to hurt. “Hey! Stop it!”

“Hey! Stop it!” Rupture parrots back, scrunching up its nose. It’s trying to sound mocking, the words are _supposed_ to be mocking, but instead of getting angry the person just jolts in place and then leans forward, nose pushed flat against the cell door.

“You’re talking again?” They breathe, eyes lighting up in a way that makes Rupture’s stomach clench too tightly for comfort. It does not like this. It doesn’t like this at all. Something about this is bad and wrong. Bad and wrong and if her Mistress were here, she would say so too. “That’s-that’s great, ‘Mando! That’s awesome!”

“The other one. Want the other one,” Rupture growls. Its voice is hoarse from lack of use outside of when it screams in its nightmares. And it wants the other one. The only other person who visits it down in this hole in the ground that doesn’t look at it with a sick kind of horrified fear. Like Rupture is a bleeding bear caught in a trap. Even this person looks at it like that, sometimes. But the other one doesn't. It wants the other one. “Give me the other one.”

The person’s face falls. _Rupture’s_ person’s face falls. Hm. For some reason, it doesn’t get any pleasure from that. “...Okay.” They look at it, biting their lower lip and trying not to let their hurt feelings show on their face. “I’ll get him, alright?”

Rupture watches them leave. It hums and rocks back and forth, clicking its tongue in its mouth. Mistress used to hate when it did these things, didn’t she? Rupture’s people love it when it does them. They say it’s a good thing. And for some reason it makes it happy to make its people happy. It likes watching its own movements run through the air to them like an electrical current and make them rock and flap and hum too. It likes that.

Strange, how many things it is allowed to like now that its Mistress is-gone. Gone. Gone and _not_ dead _(shut up shut up shut up shut up)_ because of _course_ Rupture did not kill its Mistress, its Lady, that would be-that would be silly. That would be stupid. That would be a lie. And lying isn’t good to do, is it? No, no, no, no it is not.

Rupture’s fingers twitch for a scythe that isn’t there and weapons that don’t come at its beck and call anymore when the person returns with Rupture’s other person in tow. Other person’s face lights up and it runs to the glass of the cell door, eyes wide and smile practically glowing. Rupture mimics the smile in return, lips twisting up in a crude facsimile of actual emotion.

“Cisco says you’re talking again! And that you were asking for me!” Rupture’s other person sings, throwing its arms out like its a bird about to take flight. Always so full of _motion,_ its people are-its Cisco-Paco person and its Dante person. Its people. “How’ve you been?”

Rupture frowns. Another pale imitation of actual expression. Its been getting better at mimicry lately. Not quite convincing, though. “Alone.”

“I know, hermano,” its Dante person says sympathetically. Rupture wonders why it can’t think of them by their names when they’re separate. Only when they’re together. It’s frustrating for it. It tries not to wonder about the stinging sensation that accompanies that last word. “We want to come down here more often, but the people who work here too don’t like it when I’m around. They say I’m a bad influence on Cisco. You know how it is-just like the teachers back home. They don’t say it out loud, but I can tell they’re thinking it.”

“That’s not true, Dante,” Rupture’s Cisco person argues. “They don’t-” They shake their head. “Never mind. Armando, we really do want to come down and see you more often. We visit as much as we can, I promise. We’re both so glad you’re talking again, ‘Mando, really! It’s great!”

They don’t say that it’s not as much progress as they’d been hoping for. They _can’t_ say that. It’s cruel and it’s selfish but maybe Cisco thought that everything would go back to normal, back to the way it used to be, the second they ripped Rupture’s Mistress’s claws out of its head and dragged it kicking and screaming down to the Pipeline where it couldn’t hurt anybody else. Including itself.

“Talking again,” Rupture agrees. It hurts its throat to talk too much. It hasn’t been able to talk for a long time when it isn’t screaming, and talking without being beaten and punished for it is still so new… New and _fascinating._ There are so many strange rules here at this place without Rupture’s Mistress. It can’t help but be curious about them. “Talking again, talking again, talking again.”

Rupture’s Dante person looks at Rupture’s Cisco person. “Are you _sure_ we can’t let him out? Just for a little while? With both of us watching him to make sure he doesn’t do anything? That-that can’t hurt, right?”

Rupture perks up a little with wide eyes only to deflate again when its other person reluctantly and slowly shakes their head. “I-I want to, Dante. Trust me, I want to. But we can’t. He’s-he’s too dangerous for us to let run around STAR Labs. Dangerous and mentally unstable and-and-” He looks at Rupture with soft, sad eyes. “I want to, Dante, I really do, but we just… We can’t.”

“He’s our _brother,_ Cisco!” Rupture’s Dante person throws their hands up in the air. Rupture automatically slinks backward until its as deep into the little cell as it can possibly go, pressing tightly up against one of the padded blue walls. “We can’t just leave him locked up down here forever! He needs, like, therapy and-and to come _home_ with us and-”

“I know that! I _know_ that, okay?” Rupture watches their shoulders slump and hears the crack in their voice. “He’s our brother. _My_ brother. But he’s… He’s dangerous. And being down here is the best thing for him and for everyone else. I don’t like it and I don’t think any of us _should_ like it but it’s what we have to do to keep everyone safe. Including Armando.”

Rupture curls down small on itself while they argue. It rubs its shoulder against the wall a little, stretching out its arm just to feel the bones in its shoulder pop. They do that a lot. It’s funny. Rupture hums and hugs its shoulders tightly and rocks back and forth a little. Too quietly for its people to hear, it whispers to itself despite how strange it sounds on its tongue. “Armando, Armando, Armando, Armando…”

* * *

 

“Easy, easy, it’s okay,” Cisco says. He doesn’t let go of Armando’s hand-he can’t afford to. It’s for his safety as much as it is for Armando’s. “How’s that?”

Armando tugs on the shirt it’s wearing, making a small distressed noise at the back of its throat. “Wrong, wrong, wrong, _wrong, Cisco, wrong-”_

“Alright, alright, I got you, it’s okay.” Cisco repeats that over and over again as he helps Armando sit down and take its shirt off. He tries not to stare at the scars, he really does, but every time he sees them it feels like the first time. There are just so _many_ of them-from the ones Cisco recognizes as injuries from play fighting when they were kids to rows and rows of Ms sliced into Armando’s flesh. “How’s that? Better?”

“Better, better,” Armando agrees. It flaps its free hand a little frantically when Cisco offers it a different shirt. “Is that one-” Its words dissolve into a clicking and chattering sound and Cisco waits patiently for it to restart its sentence, face screwed up into concentration so it won’t lapse back into the only language it was allowed to speak for years. They’ve been working on helping Armando manage the two languages vying for control in its head-three, really, but Armando hasn’t spoken more than a fragment of Spanish since they got it back, something Cisco tries to pretend doesn’t concern him at all. “Is that one also bad?”

“It’s a lot softer, so it should be much nicer on your scars.” Cisco helps Armando wriggle into the nice soft shirt. He has to help it do a lot of things that involve fine motor control now. Caitlin says it’s because of all the nerve damage it sustained when it was Rupture, though whether the injuries were from the people it hunted down or from Lady Mordeth it’s impossible to say. Cynthia, if she were willing to be around, might say they were almost all from her mother.

God, Cisco misses having her around. He wishes he didn’t have to choose between helping his brother and seeing her. Logically he understands why she wouldn’t want to be around Armando, not after all the pain it’d caused her on her home Earth and the pain it had caused others on countless more, but emotionally Cisco just wants to curl up in bed with his girlfriend and cry pathetically about how he can’t do _anything_ to help Armando get better, not really.

“This shirt is better, Cisco,” Armando says loudly. It smiles at him, and Cisco’s stomach twists. His throat feels tight and he’s suddenly too hot for comfort. “The shirt is better!"

He smiles shakily back through the film that’s suddenly decided to cover his eyes and blur his vision. He tries not to start crying. The last thing he wants is to make Armando any more distressed or upset. “I’m glad, ‘Mando. That’s really great.”

He catches sight of some movement near the doorway and purses his lips when he spots Harry looking there. Cisco makes a shooing gesture with one hand that abruptly stops when Armando grabs his hand firmly in between both of its rough larger ones. It looks at Cisco intently. “Do we have to be quiet here?” It asks softly. “Cisco? Do we have to be quiet here?”

Cisco carefully extracts his hand from Armando’s grip and shakes his head. “No, no, no. We don’t have to be quiet here. It’s not like school. It’s okay to be loud here. It’s fine.” God, Armando… “It’s okay. Nobody will be mad at me. Or at you. Or at Dante.”

Except maybe for Harry-he gets mad at Cisco for it sometimes, but-but it’s not like Harry’s opinion _really_ matters at all, does it? Cisco will have to tell Armando that it doesn’t matter. Harry hasn’t left the doorway, and Cisco can practically feel his disapproval radiating into the room. When he’s sure Armando isn’t looking, Cisco flips him off.

“I don’t like being quiet,” Armando says in agreement. “Where is Dante? Where is Dante? And my prey? I want to see my prey. My Mistress will be upset if my prey is… Is gone. If I didn’t capture it. She will be so upset.” It reaches out and rests its hands heavily on Cisco’s shoulders. “You have touched my prey. And it touched you. And more. And you enjoyed it. Where is it?”

Cisco’s cheeks turn bright red. “That’s-for one thing, you can’t-you can’t ask about that, or talk about that, Jesus Christ, Armando-and for another thing, Cindy is _fine_ and that means that you’re not going to see her again, probably.” Oh, god, the lump in his throat is back. “She does whatever she wants, and she doesn’t want to see you after everything you did to her home. She probably doesn’t want to see me, either. And, ‘Mando… Your, uh, ‘Mistress’... She’s dead, remember? You killed her. Don’t you remember that, ‘Mando?”

Armando recoils, eyes going wide and filling with tears as it shakes its head back and forth, faster and faster as it starts to sob. “No, no, no! Lying is _bad!_ Lying is _bad!_ I would _never_ betray my Mistress! I would _never_ harm her! Not ever! Lying is _bad,_ Cisco!”

“Armando, take a few deep breaths.” Cisco sets his hands on its shoulders and squeezes a little. It always calmed Armando down when they were both kids, when the most upsetting thing they had to deal with was school bullies. “It’s okay. You’re safe now. She’s dead. That means that she can’t hurt you anymore, alright? She can’t hurt you, or Cindy, or Quell, or anyone on any Earth. Do you know what that makes you, Armando?”

“Disobedient,” Armando sniffles. “Cowardly. Bad. Someone who deserves to be punished for what they’ve done. For being a bad little god.”

“No, ‘Mando, it makes you a _hero.”_ Cisco squeezes tighter with his hands and it’s like a switch has been flipped in Armando’s brain as it melts into his hands. “Okay? It makes you a hero. Someone who deserves every good thing I can give you and more. It makes you a _good person.”_

“A-a good person? Even though she was my Mistress? Even though I loved her?” Armando’s voice is tiny and hoarse, and even though Cisco knows eye contact is impossible for his big brother to manage he still looks Armando in the face and nods firmly.

“A good person. You’re my brother, Armando. I’ll never give up on you. Just like I wouldn’t give up on Dante. You’re a good person. You’re a _hero.”_ Cisco’s voice cracks just a little bit. “I love you, Armando. Okay?”

“Okay,” Armando echoes. “I love you, Cisco.”

There’s no emotion behind it. Not really. That makes Cisco want to scream. He swallows it down, though, stifling the sobs that want to come hiccuping out of his throat along with it. Armando’s just repeating what he’s saying back at him, like it was when it was talking before. Like a broken toy.

“Come on,” Cisco says instead, sighing a little and swallowing past the sudden ache in his lungs as he takes Armando’s hand in his, “let’s go to the Cortex. Now that you’re dressed, I want you to be able to meet everyone properly, okay?”

“Okay.” Armando allows Cisco to pull it along, focused more on the way that the fabric of its clothes feel on its body than on anything else. These clothes are so different from the ones that Lady Mordeth allowed it to wear when it wasn’t wearing its heavy Lanzing flame-forged armor. It stops paying attention to that when Cisco stops walking and it almost bumps into him.

Oh. They must have arrived at Cisco’s ‘Cortex’, whatever that means. All Armando knows is that there are _new people_ here, people who it has never seen before and people who it _knows_ that it has tried to hunt before. Funny, funny, funny little people.

“Cisco,” one of them says cautiously, eyeing Armando worriedly, “why did you bring your supervillain big brother up here?”

“He’s not a supervillain, Ralph,” Cisco corrects. “You _all_ know that. Armando was brainwashed. And tortured. And abused. You all know that. I brought him up here because one, it’s not fair that he has to be locked up in that tiny Pipeline cell all the time, and two, I wanted him to meet all of you.”

Armando remembers, barely, what you’re supposed to do when you meet a group of new people, and lifts one of its hands into a wave, directed at the man-Armando is _sure_ that Cisco just said his name, but its head feels weird and it doesn’t even attempt to remember-who asked why Armando was out of its padded little cell.

A little confused, the man waves back, as does the woman sitting in the chair to his left. She’s very pretty and she doesn’t look afraid of Armando _or_ angry that Cisco brought it there, only honestly curious. Armando likes her immediately and smiles at her as well as it can, scrunching up its eyes and baring its teeth in what it hopes comes off as a friendly gesture.

“Cisco, are you sure this is a good idea?” Another man asks. There are a lot of men in this room, Armando realizes. Three girls but they are outnumbered by-it tries to count-five men. Five men, three girls, and Armando. It doesn’t feel good. It feels like there should be less people here. There’s too many and they’re all unpredictable.

“Yeah, I am,” Cisco says firmly. “This isn’t your call to make, Barry. He’s my brother. I-well, me and Dante-know him better than anyone in the world. I know he’s not going to do anything, okay? He’s-he’s still recovering, but I know him. He’s not going to do anything.”

Armando pulls its hand out of Cisco’s and wanders over to a little glass wall, pressing its hands against it with curiosity. It’s a little bit too close to one of the people for comfort-a very short woman who is also very pretty but Armando is worried about breaking because shorter people are breakable and she is also very round which is making her vibrations feel weird-but Armando tries to ignore that.

“You can draw on that, if you like,” the woman says, and Armando brightens. The woman smiles at its hopeful expression.  “Barry does it all the time. Your brother does, too, when he needs to get something down. And Harry. Wally, why don’t you get Armando one of the nicer markers from the speed lab?”

One of the other men leaves fast, faster than he should’ve been able to, and Armando relaxes a little. For the few seconds it takes for the fast man to come back, there’s one less person in the room to have to watch out for.

Said too-fast man deposits the markers in front of Armando, smiling and warm and friendly. “Here, you can use these. Be careful, though, ‘cause the orange one is almost out of ink and sometimes too _much_ ink comes out of the purple one and the white one when you haven’t used it in a few days.”

Armando, pleased with this new development, starts scribbling on the glass wall. It draws its prey, giving it red eyes and a bloody nose and all the things it had last time it saw it. When it was still allowed to hunt it down. Her prey was so silly to think that it could ever escape the Hound. Ever-ever get _away_ from Armando’s Mistress.

It looks over its shoulder when it hears its name-one of the people is talking to its person. Its Cisco person. It abandons its markers and wanders over to hug Cisco from behind, resting its chin on his shoulder and squeezing his ribs. The other person pales a little, but Cisco just smiles and leans back into Armando’s chest.

“Hey, ‘Mando,” he says affectionately. “We were just talking about you.”

“I know.” It squeezes tighter. Cisco is so fragile. He could-he could be broken so easily. Armando remembers-it remembers-it closes its eyes. It remembers shoving Cisco aside like he was made of paper. It remembers grabbing its prey so harshly that it cried out. It remembers the sound its wrist made as it broke when he tried to escape. It remembers how its prey fought to get away from it, to get to Cisco.

Cisco can feel Armando’s heart rate kicking up a few notches. Feels it tighten its grip. Feels it growl softly into his ear. “Hey, Armando, take some deep breaths, okay? I think this was enough human interaction for one day-we should go back down to your room, alright?”

“My room…” Armando frowns. It-it remembers-“Is my Mistress there? Is she waiting for me in my room?” It remembers its room at the Spire. Cold and dark and comfortable only for it, with monsters swarming in the dark that had cowered in fear from the moment Armando had destroyed one of them. It remembered when its Mistress would bring it to her room. “Or-or am I going to her room…?”

“No, no, you’ll be alone down there,” Cisco promises. “It’s okay. Come with me. We can get some snacks before we head down there. Some of those marshmallow things you like-or at least you used to like them, I don’t know… Never mind. We’ll get some snacks, is what I’m saying.”

Armando nods and lets him lead it back down to its little room. The one Cisco hates to call a cell.

* * *

Dante is the one who tells her- _her, her, her,_ it still feels so good to think it over and over again in her mind, the mind that she’s steadily piecing back together-that something has happened to Cisco. That something is _wrong._ That she’s the only one of them strong enough to fix it.

She can tell that something is wrong before he says so, of course, and she’s on her feet with her palms pressed flat against the glass of the door as he runs to her room. To her cell. It takes him too long to open it. Too long to input the code and hit the button. The doors open achingly slowly, far, far too slowly, and it’s all Armando can do not to scream and pry them open herself.

“Where’s Cisco?” She snarls, her fingers itching for the weapon that’s not there, it’s _not there,_ where did they _hide it-_

“They took him,” Dante gasps out, pressing something small and metal-a key-into Armando’s hand. “They took him. They’re going to kill him, I think. You have to save him. They can’t-the Flashes can’t-please, ‘Mando, please, please. The key is to the supply closet where they’re keeping your scythe and your armor, it’s the second one on the right on the ninth sublevel. The others don’t trust you enough to let you out even if it’s to save him. Now _go!”_

Armando has been keeping to herself for the past week, not that she’s really aware of how long it has been. Time is hard for her to keep track of. But she’s been thinking, lately. Remembering what her Mistress did to her, and remembering what _she_ did on her Mistress’s orders, and remembering a time when she wanted nothing more than to be able to tell her family that she was a girl. She’s been remembering a lot of things.

But she remembers nothing as clearly as she remembers that she would do absolutely anything for her two baby brothers.

She sprints past Dante and runs for the closet where they’re keeping her things. Her armor. Her scythe. _Her_ things. The things that her Mistress gave her. The things she wore when she was sent to hunt down the crown princess and her father. The things she wore when she almost killed Cisco. The things she will now wear when she brings him back.

The speedsters aren’t fast enough to stop her. It takes only a small, easy blast from her to sever the two of them from the force that gives them their powers. It’s not permanent-in a few minutes they’ll have full control back. She doesn’t want to hurt them, she just wants to prevent them from stopping her.

Armando’s scythe hums the minute she picks it up again, and it makes her set her shoulders and smile in the strange way she does now. The armor is as strong as it ever was, heavy and comforting and familiar. She’ll never wear that mask again, that glorified muzzle that her Mistress used to tighten to get her to _shut up._ But the armor and the scythe are hers.

Tracking Cisco’s vibrations is easy. Flying to him would take too long, so she simply opens a breach to him, slicing the air open in a jagged line as she steps through to the other side.

Her Mistress turned her into a killing machine. Now she will use those skills to rescue the person who told her that she could be something better.

It’s immediately clear why the speedsters couldn’t save him. The whole place-an abandoned church, as far as she can tell-is covered in spikes, small ones and long ones that jab out at random. The ground around it is slick with ice-one wrong move and they’ll slide right into the spines. She can only imagine that there are traps leading inside.

Luckily, Armando doesn’t care, and levels the church with a single blast.

Cisco’s vibrations go sour with fear and she steps forward, unsheathing her scythe from her back and dragging the blade along what’s left of the floor as she peers down into the now-exposed basement.

Cisco’s tied to a table, head hanging down off the edge of it. At his head is a man with glowing white fingers who must be the source of the ice nibbling at Armando’s boots. Others are arranged in a loose semicircle around the table, hooded heads bowed.

Armando jumps down and neatly slices the head off of the man with ice powers before he can slit Cisco’s throat with the long, wicked-looking knife in his hands.

The others all stare at her, and Armando bares her teeth in a savage grin as she slowly cuts the ropes around Cisco’s wrists. “Stay away from my brother.”

It only takes her a few seconds to dispatch the next one-she crushes his bones inside of his body and he falls to the ground with a squeal of pain. The next two are blasted in the chest. The fourth one has her leg shattered under her as she tries to run. She won’t kill them, not like she killed the leader, but she will make them suffer for hurting _her_ Cisco. Armando raises her scythe-

_“‘Mando, that’s enough!”_

She jerks her head up at the sound of Cisco’s voice. He looks at her from where he’s sitting on the table. Dimly, she’s aware that she’s slowly lowering her scythe. That the rain is slicking her curls down. That there’s blood that doesn’t belong to her pooling at her feet.

“It’s over, ‘Mando,” Cisco says quietly, and she rushes to support him as he stumbles off the table and almost collapses, his vibrations crying out for the comfort of hers. “You got me. It’s okay. Everything’s okay now. Just leave them, alright? They’re not gonna-they’re not gonna try this again.”

Armando looks at what remains of the cultists and nods, slowly, as she opens a breach to take her brother home.

* * *

A frowns at her reflection, running her fingers through her curls and tilting her head to the side. “Dante, how do you think I look?”

“I dunno, ‘Mando.” He peeks into the mirror over her shoulder. “I think you look pretty nice. You’re very pretty, A. Me and you, we got the looks of the Ramon family.”

“Hmm.” A touches at her eyelashes, tracing her fingers down over the branching scar on the side of her face. Her skin is darker than both Cisco’s and Dante’s but not darker than her father’s, and her brown eyes have little red marks inside them now. Like Cisco’s golden-blue ones. Like… Like... “Dante? How is the Princess?”

“The pri-oh, you mean Cindy, don’t you?” Dante pats her shoulder and tries not to have his hands shake. “She’s… Better, I guess. Her and Cisco are patching things up. She knows you weren’t in control, ‘Mando, but it’s still hard for her, y’know?”

A nods wordlessly as she stops studying her face and moves to sit down on one of the soft bean bag chairs in Cisco’s apartment. She rocks in place for a while, watching Dante try to cook. It’s still weird to not be living in the little underground cell anymore. Cisco’s apartment is still small, but it’s roomy enough and comfortable. She likes it there.

“Do you think we should wake him up?” A looks at where Cisco is passed out on the couch, halfway curled up on his side and chewing on his sweatshirt sleeve in his sleep. “Your food looks almost ready…”

“Nah, let him sleep. The smell of it will wake him up sooner or later, anyway.” Dante shrugs. “Besides, we still got a little while to go before it’s done.”

A rubs at one of the scars on the back of her hand and watches Dante stir what he’s making and looks down at Cisco, who is in fact gradually starting to wake up as his nose picks up the smell of freshly cut onions.

She smiles. Yes. These are her people. This is A’s family.

For the first time in a long time, she feels at home.


End file.
